Mining interactive social network for recommending appropriate learning partners in a Web-based cooperative learning environment

Abstract

In Web-based cooperative learning environments, peer-to-peer interaction often suffers from the difficulty due to lack of exploring useful social interaction information, so that peers cannot find appropriate learning partners to make an effective cooperative learning. This problem easily results in poor learning outcomes in Web-based cooperative learning environments. Generally, learning partners assigned by instructors cannot ensure to compose suitable learning groups for individual learners in cooperative learning environments. Inappropriate learning partners not only easily lead to poor learning interaction and achievement, but also lose the meaning of cooperative learning. As a result, this study presents a novel scheme of mining social interactive networks for recommending appropriate learning partners for individual learners in a cooperative problem-based learning environment. The preliminary experimental results reveal that the proposed scheme provides likely benefits in terms of promoting learnerspsila learning interaction and learning performance in cooperative learning environments.